Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

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Most people who claim that just don't want government doing things they don't like. They are fine with government doing things they do like.

What voting contingent actually wants less government?

Conservatives often claim they want less government, but they rarely govern that way.

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Just recently saw a farmer on Twitter talking up the self-reliance of farmers and how Democrats want everybody to be on welfare.

Then somebody looked him up on the government subsidies database. He’d received over $2,000,000 in government subsidies.

He just didn't want government subsidies for THEM. That is really conservatism in a nut-shell. Government shouldn't tell me what to do, but it should tell them what to do. Government shouldn't help them, but should help me. I have mine, f-you.

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There's some of that sure, but there's also the obvious point that some people's list of things they like government doing is smaller than that of others.

On the voting part, it's much like how some of the left doesn't want Biden because he's too moderate. You generally still vote for them when the election comes around, because they're still better than the alternative. We can't just say that we should believe people when they tell us who they are, and then decide not to believe them in other cases when we don't like the conclusion.

There certainly is a lot of fighting on these threads, but I wouldn't really consider paint FOFC or anybody in it with the extreme left or right brush. For the most part, we can have conversations here, and that's more than you can expect in many places. We often can't agree, but that's okay.

Reddit on the other hand, is a totally different story.

Ron Klain has just been named Biden's Chief of Staff. Klain was also Obama's "Ebola Czar" back when there was a concern about Ebola spreading in the country and did a good job there.

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Preventing the infectious disease from spreading or talking the media out of their hysteria? Giving realistic assessments & listening to experts seems wise in any case, but I'm not sure the overblown Ebola scare & COVID pandemic have much in common - if anything his job should have been to downplay the threat from what the American public felt while here it's the opposite.

I think what's similar is to listen to scientists, which is what Obama did (and may have hurt him in 2014 midterms), and what Biden is clearly going to do.

Well those small government folks got awfully quiet the past 4 years. Have a feeling they will be real vocal come mid-January.

Kind ofn like the anti-war folks who got eerily quiet when Obama took office.

My point is that small government and anti-war are two areas that get touted a lot but have essentially no real coalition or power in this country. Mostly just a bunch of fakes.

For a while it was considered the pet project of the Norquist types, as a vehicle for no taxes.

Oh, they're coming right back out of the woodwork as soon as Biden is sworn in.

SI

We're currently neck-deep in concurrent political and infectious disease crises and one party is actively cheering on both while the other is paralyzed because they are too busy arguing over which of its members are the stinkiest.

I see this is as building mighty castles in the air based on flawed single-factor analysis. If you look at it from the standpoint of voting political power, then the only groups who have any power at all are pretty much opposition to whoever's been in charge for a while and perceived economic conditions. Nothing else really has enough power to swing anything. Under that way of viewing our system, we might as well stop talking about virtually all political issues. Racism, the environment, foreign policy, you name it can all just go away as well. Reality is more complex.

That doesn't mean people don't care about issues in varying amounts and degrees. I think the anti-war crowd had an impact during Obama's presidency, and small-government types did in Trump's (most obviously during COVID). There's just a massive gap between 'we care about this and only this is enough numbers to swing national elections' and 'we mostly just say we care about this but don't really'. There are multiple issues at play for most people, the natural human bias towards a candidate who does things we like on unrelated issues, etc.

I think it's more in the vein of saying any new vehicles bought by the government should be electric. New stuff should run on renewable energy. Not just saying "Hey guys. You can't use your gas-powered cars anymore."

I get that, but you still can't get anywhere near 100% renewables even going forward from right now. You need a huge investment in new power plants to get off of coal, and right now that would involve quite a bit of nuclear because renewable sources are not yet at the point where you can rely on them to power the grid all of the time regardless how many you build. Electric aircraft aren't viable and it'll be a very long time until they are, if ever, for the longer routes. And then there's the everyday items, from antifreeze and tennis rackets to toothbrushes and crayons to detergents, deodorant, rubber alcohol, thousands of ubiquitous products that you use in everyday life without thinking they come from oil at some point in the chain.

There are algae-based and other replacements being worked on for a lot of them, but we aren't remotely close to being able to get rid of them completely. That's why I say it's a matter of how fast you move, not whether you get there.

I would say that heavily regulating fracking is long overdue. But that's not the same as getting rid of it. Though, at the rate we're going, we're stupidly contaminating a ton of our water supply in places that don't have a ton just for fracking because the price of gas > price of water (and extraction), which seems like a stupid equation to use for this.

SI

It's like people have never heard of the concept of a phased implementation before.

My experience with Trump supporters is they see everything in black and white. Nuance is a concept they don't grasp. whether it is fracking, defunding the police, socialism, etc...they tend to leave very little room for gray area. I suspect that is the influence of FOX News scare tactics.

I've noticed this as well. There's zero nuance when it comes to things they are against/hate, but, they all of a sudden get extremely pedantic when it comes to arguing why trump is the next best thing since sliced bread.

I think it helped Obama get elected, but it also disappeared when he took office and was drone striking villages. Also the next two nominees of that party were individuals who voted for the Iraq War.

When Trump spent like a drunken sailor, none of the Tea Party voices said a word. Perfectly happy with handouts to people and businesses. The huge welfare increases for farmers.

I'm sure there are some diehards out there that truly stand by their principles. But most of this country doesn't really care as long as their person is doing it.

There's a foreign policy group that really does love regime change, but they're pretty small. The larger group of defense contractors and their congressional allies are fine without new wars as long as they keep selling weapons. Trump didn't pull back on anything, increased our defense spending, and pushed for foreign weapons sales. He kinda pleased everyone.

I remember this stat when it came to drone strikes and who was president:

Democratic support: 38% support in 2013, 37% support in 2017
Republican support: 22% support in 2013, 86% support in 2017

It shows consistency with democrats and the normal hypocrisy of republicans.

Source: Republican voters have flip-flopped on airstrikes in Syria - Axios

Question about the senate:

As of right now, the media is showing the senate at 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and 2 TBD (Georgia revote). But of the 48 Democrats, 2 are actually Independents (Sanders & King) that canvas with the Democrats. So if the Democrats take both Georgia seats, does that make it 50-50 or 50-48-2?

Just wondering about who will 'control' the senate...

The independents are considered to be Dems in this scenario, I think. Dems only need to get to 50/50 because Harris would be the deciding vote.

I was more concerned about who would be Senate Majority/Minority leaders...

It would be the Dems, Scarecrow. The independents would caucus with the Dems to elect the leader.

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Majority or minority leader is just a name. The party with the votes gets to decide the agenda. the "leader" is just the party's spokesperson for each party on issues. There's really nothing more to it than that. I don't know if the Dems would be minority given 2 independents, but if the independents vote with the Dems, Dems control regardless of what the leader is called.

I am trying to come up with the best ad to convince Republicans not to vote in the run off election. Something like "the Dems stole the last election, and your vote won't count this time either. Why bother?"

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They can't steal your vote if you don't cast it.

"Trump's not on the ballot, so why bother?"

Send a message to RINO Brian Kemp by letting his GA allies fail in the runoffs!

Kind of lost in the shuffle are the gains that the republicans made in the House of Representatives, defying all pre-election polling. Incumbent house republicans have not lost a single race. I think this is further evidence that the blue wave was largely a myth, and the presidential election was a refutation of Trump. The Georgia senate runoffs should be very interesting.

Kim Beats Cisneros in California House Race: Republican Pickup

So, I mean, if you're married to the idea that there was some kind of interference in the elections (see: the memes going DEMOCRATS WERE UP IN ARMS ABOUT RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE FOUR YEARS AGO BLAH BLAH), it wouldn't be a huge stretch to go "look, Russia's goal is to undermine the United States, and they can get a two-fer by both triggering a Trump tantrum over losing AND undermining Biden's ability to actually get anything done as President."

So that blue wave that ends up not being a blue wave? Explains how you end up with situations like "Biden wins this state with a vulnerable Republican senator who wins going away." If Russia interfered again, but did so in a sophisticated enough way to split the baby, so to speak.

The other option is, as I've argued until I'm blue in the face, the Occam's Razor solution - that, yeah, people rejected Trump specifically, but not his Republican allies generally (which is weird).

The intelligence agencies have talked about Russia looking to interfere again in 2020, but there hasn't been any chatter on what that would have looked like, so...

But there isn't really a defensible scenario that has the Democrats, or their allies, putting their thumb on the scale just enough to elect Biden without ALSO bringing along a Senate he can work with.

It's either continued Russian undermining of American democracy, just in a more sophisticated way, or the electorate rejected Trump and not Republicans.

The "Democrats cheated to steal the election!" narrative just doesn't hold water.

Still thinking about Hillary for AG. I know she won't get confirmed so maybe acting AG?

Someone from Biden's team should float the idea after the GA elections just as a jab at Trump.

Did a little post moving to consolidate threads a bit. (NO ONE LOST POSTS!)

Moving forward, let's try this...

"IF TRUMP LOSES IN NOVEMBER...."--Trump's continued fight against the results of the 2020 election, the finalizing of the electoral college, etc. Discussion here should largely end when he either concedes (HA!) or Biden takes office.

"THE BIDEN PRESIDENCY..."--Obviously will be the "moving forward" thread, but I also put the most recent discussion of the Georgia Senate race in there, as it impacts the Biden Presidency tremendously.

"THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY"--If by some miracle the President decides to actually govern--rather than whine and sulk--for the next 2 months, I'd expect this thread to remain active. Yesterday's COVID presser made sense to be in here, and speaking of that....

"COVID 19 POLITICAL DISCUSSION"--Merging that entire thread into the Trump Presidency. Once Biden takes over, COVID-19 political discussion belongs in that thread. There's definitely a place for a non-political COVID-19 discussion, but given the national nature of the response, the political pieces of it fit into discussion of the Presidency.

I don't think for a second he'd do it, but wouldn't something like this just boil down to what happens in GA? Why wouldn't she get confirmed if they have a tie + Harris? (Or do you think some Dems would break ranks?)

More like more fodder for the true believers which will work against the GA senate races. Better to do it after IMO.

But we still have an election going on (Georgia Senate). That should be in the election thread.

Following the Mandalorian theme ...

Ben: I have spoken

Just trying to consolidate. I've gotten multiple complaints of "too many threads on the same thing" and "I don't know where to post this," so I felt this was a place where we could consolidate. As I said about the Biden thread....

I mean, that race is the linchpin for just about all national politics for at least half of Biden's term.

I disagree, but you're the red, white and blue underwear wearing captain of this ship, so carry on.

BUT THE ELECTION IS NOT OVER BEN! IF TRUMP LOSES IS ASSUMING FACTS NOT IN EVIDENCE AND I WILL NOT POST THERE!

people actually have complained about this? Jesus folks...

I've never understood the too many posts complaint. They aren't a finite resource.

I hold up my posting history as evidence, your honor

SI

Not to mention in general we will chase rabbits in any thread. We can branch into several sub-subjects in a discussion, but we had a good break down on where to post main themes (election in the election thread, Trump in the Trump thread, Biden in the Biden thread, Covid in the covid thread).

Now, I have a really interesting election break down tweet from Nate Cohn to post, but where do I post it? Logically, it should have went into the election thread, but now we don't have one. Should I put it in the Trump thread? It is about Trump, but not just Trump. Should I put it in the Biden thread? It is about more than Biden.

Having multiple threads for subjects helps the conversations be diverse and allows us to follow threads of conversation. Having fewer threads leads to hard to follow conversations as they bleed all over each other. I don't think this is an improvement at all.

I don't believe that at ALL

It's probably one republican who doesn't want a biden thread